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What, precisely, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to tell. The power to initiate armed conflict, long considered a crucial legislative power, has become a murky prerogative of the executive branch in the time since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in the past few months, has asserted even more of that power for himself, conducting military actions on vessels in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending appears to be largely been taken away from the legislative branch too; now, under the office of management and budget director, Russell Vought, a great deal of the power to allocate government money has likewise shifted to the presidency, with the administration asserting the ability to cancel congressionally authorized expenditures and attempting to redirect the money to other uses. It’s as if they’re passing any legislation, either; almost all legislation must now be crammed into spending packages, huge recurring essential comprehensive bills that can bypass the filibuster. But when those fail to be approved – and increasingly, they do not – the government just ceases operations. At least, big parts of the government shut down – and it’s not clear how many citizens notice. Currently, the government has been closed for the entire month; there are no signs of it reopening in the near future. But the executive branch continues operating smoothly.

And so the question of dominance of Congress can appear rather moot. Why should Americans care who holds a majority in a body that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

How ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric may help the state of California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five additional congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is approved by voters in a special election in the coming weeks, has captured the political imagination of liberals across the country. Partly, it is a belated response to trends happening in other states: Republican-controlled states have for a long time embraced extreme biased redistricting while big Democratic-controlled such as California, the Empire State and the Evergreen State draw their district lines via nonpartisan independent commissions, an asymmetry that has resulted in closely divided control of the House and a long-term sense, by Democrats, that their party is at a disadvantage. The state measure is clearly intended as a response to a mid-decade redistricting that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which implemented maps that will provide Republicans an five more seats in the state’s House representation in the upcoming term; similar redistricting moves are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (The left in Virginia are also following the state’s example in seeking to redistrict.)

The California initiative seems probable to pass, as progressive voters react with fear and frustration to Trump’s authoritarian centralization of power and seek ways to check his worst impulses. But Prop 50 is not free from debate. Some opponents warn that the move could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to change districts triggering a revenge pattern in which Republican-controlled states do even more to draw their districts so as to foreclose any possibility of opposition party success. Different critics have questioned the measure on strictly ideological pro-democracy grounds: a district that is created in such a way that the outcome of the election is never really in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it means, inevitably, that the influence of dissenting voices is muted, and that the procedure of debate, argument and convincing that is supposed to define a healthy democratic process will be confined only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is worth taking each of these objections on their merits. The initial critique, that Prop 50 will spur the right to alter their respective districts in retaliation, does not hold up as a logical point: it is illogical to say that Republicans will be compelled to behave in antidemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already doing so without those steps. The Republican party, I would observe, has required no any incentive of revenge to redraw maps that secure long-term positions for their party: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the complete lack of similar actions by the left, for years.

The second critique, in my view, is more significant, reflecting not just a strategic disagreement about how to confront the Republicans’ anti-democracy shift, but a kind of melancholic wish for a distinct country than the one that the United States has turned into. It is accurate that in a better world – in the world that most Democrats, I think, yearn for and aspire to – the proposition would be unappealing to our principles, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is not good to manipulate disfavored demographics; it is not good for politicians to choose their constituents, rather than the reverse; it is not good that votes are made noncompetitive. That these actions have become essential in order to slow the autocratic advance of Trump’s control and reduce the level of suffering he is capable to cause is sad; it is a indication of how far we have declined from something more like a representative government. But they are necessary. It is only after the fight against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what fighting it has made us.

If Congress fails to in reality have lawmaking, war making or budgetary power, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s five new blue house members will be dispatched to the capital to do? One thing that Congress still retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to examine. Even in our era of sclerotic government and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that authority to great effect. In the coming years, if Prop 50 passes and the state’s new representatives are sworn in, they will become a part of a institution with the authority to investigate Trump, to televise their hearings into his conduct and to compel associates of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet columnist